It is believed that the first pet fountain was a product called Kitty Kreek which was perhaps advertized as early as 1995. The initial basis for a pet fountain was to stimulate the water consumption by the animal by attracting a pet to the water supply with the sight and sound of falling water. While there is no evidence of falling water stimulating water consumption in nature, the advertizing claim did motivate pet owners to buy something for their beloved pet to replace a simple bowl of room temperature tap water. For a while, the most successful pet fountain was called The Drinkwell which operated on the premise of the purported preference of cats to drink water falling from a dripping or running household faucet. The inventors of the Drinkwell received U.S. Pat. No. 5,799,609, issued in September 1998 covering the concept of
The restriction of causing the flow of the water to initially attract a pet and then cause a pet to drink was limited by the claims of the aforementioned '609 patent such that other manufacturers of pet products usually made their flow of water not to “free fall” , but rather to be in constant contact with the materials used to manufacture the fountain and therefore not infringe the aforementioned US patent Thus the water was made to slide down a ramp rather than fall into a pet accessible container which was located below the elevated water area. The amount of flow for most fountain products was adjusted by placing a flow restrict or in front of the intake area of the pump which often caused an unacceptable amount of pump noise due to cavitation. No prior art product known to applicant provided any means of adjusting the direction of the flow or controlling the temperature.
A large number of pet fountains were sold in attempts to provide attractants that might cause a pet to drink more water. Due to consumer complaints, almost all fountains added a refill feature to their original design to offset the water lost to evaporation, spillage and consumption of the water by the pet. To date, most, if not all, refill designs were made of plastic which were very difficult to keep clean due to the porous nature of the plastics and the awkward and inaccessible angles within the refill containers. The construction manifestations employed to cause the water to flow from the refill container to the open container of the fountain caused many problems with water overflowing onto the floor because the moving part of the flow design would often become stuck in the open position due to the mechanism being damaged in the normal course of adding water to the refill container, or the mechanism becoming impaired due to water impurities such as calcium deposits or the buildup of algae, or the effect of cleaning measures such a chlorine bleach or heat. The customer feedback of these issues on various websites, caused many customers to throw out their fountains in just a few months to avoid these issues and the more serious dangers of slip and fall accidents, and the possible damage to expensive floors.
Other modes of chilling the water to below ambient temperature to increase the water consumption by cats, by adding ice cubes or by freezing the water within the refill container have been tried. The addition of ice cubes to reduce the water temperature usually has a limited and short term effect and is impractical when the owner works outside the home or takes a weekend trip or lives in a relatively warm climate such as much of California and the southwest. Freezing of the refill container was often found to damage the refill container as well as damage the flow restricting mechanism usually due to thermal properties differences in the two materials. Furthermore the replacement of the refill system could cost as much as the entire fountain, so owners tended to just dispose of the fountain.
Cats are very finicky animals. Cats for example will not put their head into a water container, no matter the temperature, if the container is sized such that the animal's whiskers touch the side of the container. Cats tend to avoid water supplies where spillage has occurred as cats do not like getting their feet wet. Some cats refuse to drink from algae polluted water, even if the temperature is acceptable. Diminished water consumption can result in cat dehydration and kidney disease.
When given the choice of cool dirty water versus clean warmer water, the cats usually will opt for the cool dirty water. One more fact, cats drink from the water surface, not down in the vessel housing the water.
While it was easily determined that the issues of mold and fungus could be avoided in the refill source, by the use of glass rather than plastic, this was the overcoming of but one of the issues.
All of these recited issues point to the need for a cool temperature refillable water source for cats that avoids spillage by having a suitable refill rate from the storage portion of the device to the drinking vessel, while avoiding fungus, mold and algae issues. This invention fills that need of the marketplace.